Method1 Pre-heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper..

2 In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add molasses and vanilla extract, mixing until incorporated. Add egg and mix until light and smooth, about 1 minute on medium speed.

3 Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Fold dry ingredients into wet mixture. Use electric mixer to blend just until flour is incorporated. Divide dough in half and flatten into two disks. Wrap disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least an hour and up to 2 days.stained-glass-1.jpg

4 Remove any wrappers on candies and separate them by color into plastic bags. Using a mallet to crush candies.stained-glass-2.jpg stained-glass-3.jpg

5 Place one disk between two large sheets of waxed paper and roll to 1/4-inch thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut dough into desired shapes. Transfer cookies to prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. Using a smaller cookie cutter or a knife, cut shapes into centers of cookies, reserving these center bits to add into extra dough.stained-glass-4.jpg stained-glass-5.jpg

6 Use a spoon to sprinkle the crushed candy into the hollowed-out centers of the cookies, filling to the edges. Try to keep the candy within the centers. Any candy specks that fall on the cookie will color the cookie.

7 If cookies will be hung as ornaments or decorations, poke a small hole in the top of each cookie before baking.

8 Bake 9 to 10 minutes. The candy should be melted and bubbling and the cookies just barely beginning to brown. Remove baking sheets from oven and place on wire racks to cool. Allow cookies to cool on pans at least 10 minutes; otherwise, the candy centers may separate from the dough. When cookies are completely cooled, remove and store in an airtight container. String with ribbon if you want to hang as an ornament. More info about this recipe.

Flange is a narrow fabric strip sewn between two adjacent fabrics. In this picture above it's shown in red. Piping is similar and often confused for flange but its stuffed with a cord or yarn. Flange is flat. This strip measures 3/4" wide and the length is as long as the perimeter of where it will be attached.

The 3/4 " flange strip is ironed in half on the long edge with wrong sides together. The raw edge of the flange is lined up with the raw edge of the quilt top and pinned in place, only one side at a time. The the second border, the adjacent border is added and lined up in a little sandwich with flange in the middle.

In the second picture you see from the underside of the quilt top how it looks and how the three layers line up. All the raw edges are lined up and are sewn together on the 1/4 seam allowance. The little extra piece of the flange fabric will pop out from between the adjacent border fabrics.

Stop sewing at the corners and begin the pinning process again down the next long side.

Basics

There are different threads for different jobs. Select lighter weights (50 – 100) for appliqué and piecing, heavier weight (30) for hand quilting. Traditionally, change your quilt thread color to match the background fabric. If you want to showcase the quilting stitch to stand out, then use a contrasting quilting thread. To prevent the frustration of knotting, fraying and breakage always use the best quality threads and fibers.

Hand Piecing/ Appliqué

Cotton Thread

For sewing your patches into blocks and blocks into rows, select a medium weight 50/3 ( 50 weight so it’s a thicker fiber strand and 3 plys twisted together), 50/2 or 40/3. If the twist is correct, an “S”, not over twisted and the weight, ply, material and finish all work well together then you will eliminate the frustrating tangles and breaks seen with inferior threads. Double mercerized, 100% mercerized, long staple cotton, silk finish all indicate a better quality hand piecing/ appliqué thread. Choosing a lighter weight for appliqué will allow your stitches to melt into the background, 50/2 long staple Egyptian cotton, mercerized, works very well. Aurifil, orange spool, is my favorite. See Aurifil for the best piecing thread.

Silk Thread

YLI Silk Thread for Applique

I have to mention 100% Silk Threads because they are, hands down, my top choice for appliqué. These seemingly delicate threads blend and melt effortlessly into your appliqué fabric. They are very strong, come in assortment of beautiful colors and withstand the sharp eye of the straw needle.

I never knew this event existed. Which makes me wonder how many other quilting events and companies get their word out to the quilters who want to know! ( like me )

Quilt Alliance is a nonprofit 501c3 organization established in 1993 whose mission is to document, preserve, and share our American quilt heritage by collecting the rich stories that historic and contemporary quilts, and their makers, tell about our nation’s diverse peoples and their communities.

In support of this mission, the Alliance brings together quilt makers and designers, the quilt industry, quilt scholars and teachers, and quilt collectors to further the following goals:

to promote the understanding of the quilt as an important American grassroots art form

to make information about quilts available to a broad public

to educate Americans about the importance of documenting quilts and quiltmakers so that their stories will not be lost

Quilts are great reminders of the history of our lives. So many of my quilts remind me of the people in my life at the time the quilt was made. They remind me who I was with when I bought the fabrics or threads. They remind me where I was living and events in my life. Each quilt inherits a little bit of my life into it. As a hand quilter, my quilts spend a lot of time with me. It can take a year or two to get the quilt from graph paper to quilt show. A lot of life can happen in that time.

One of my early quilts (1995) always reminds me of my first quilting instructor. I envision how we would meet every week. She would arrive at my house just as I finished nursing my youngest child. Carrying two large plastic bins into my house with all her supplies we would gather around the living room, too small to accommodate our group, and get to work.

My daughter’s quilt (1998) was created when the internet was young and using it to search for patterns was quite the challenge and very different from today. This quilt is an excellent reminder of how quickly technology changes.

One of the great things about making quilts by hand is that the piecing is portable. A great consequence of this portability is, however, that the location becomes engrained in the quilt. I spent most of the summer of 2003 piecing hexagons together at the beach. They were autumn colors, purple, gold, green and rust. I can recall just how the sand would get into my little box of pre-cut hexagons. As the summer rolled on I ultimately completed many hexagon “flowers”. Looking at the finished quilt today reminds me of the heat of August summers. But this is not the only thing I remember as I look into this quilt. I clearly remember running out of fabric for the sashing diamonds as well as the binding. The backing fabric for the hexagon quilt required a search like never before. Nothing seemed right. I searched up and down the aisles of vendors until the “right” fabric was finally found. That quilt can bring me right back to quilt show where I bought the backing fabric.

When I think of “Partly Cloudy”, a quilt I made of my horse in 2006, the location of working on him is sewn right into the quilt top. I was part of a group of hand quilters and we would get together each week to work on our projects. I have a strong memory of sitting in one of the woman’s dining room thinking how great it was that I was working on “Cloudy”, a project I have wanted to start for so long. I no longer quilt with that group of women, but the quilt reminds me of wonderful memories and friendship we shared.

Since the history behind the making of the quilt can be so interesting, it’s a good idea to include those events, locations or people that have impacted the creative process or are directly sewn into the quilt, on your quilt’s label.

Wonder Clips are finally in the quilt shop. My favorite use is clipping my socks together before I throw them in the washer and dryer. I am always missing a few matches to my socks. Now I clip before washing and the pair is always together. Yay!!! Thanks Wonder Clips! But really I use them for holding my binding in place as I sew and applique in in place.

The AQS Lancaster Show is coming soon... and there will be lots of shopping at our favorite fabric shops. Dutchland Quilt Patch, Zook's and Sauder's.

Quilt shows are so mudh fun!!! Look at the joy on Chrsta and Karen's faces!!!

After a long day of looking at quilts and vendors, we enjoyed a relaxing evening listening in at the evening lecture.

This is our Album Cover picture (If we were musicians)We'll all be back again this year making it about our 15th year, at least for me (second from the left) and Stacey Moss (on the right). Stacey and I can't remember exactly.

Taking a break before we head into Dutchland Quilt Patch.. My favorite store. Ever! Best candles, best fabric. Every Moda fabric!

Nancy Tejo from Merrick is a semifinalist for the 2015 American Quilters Society QuiltWeek-Lancaster Pennsylvania, March 11-14, at the Lancaster County Convention Center. Nancy has been chosen to display the quilt, Butterfly, along with 200 others in the AQS contest. First, Second and Third place prizes in seven categories will be awarded, along with six overall awards including Best in Show. Regardless of how Butterfly places in the final judging, all semifinalists’ quilts will be displayed at the show, which is expected to draw more than 15,000 people.

AQS Founder and President Meredith Schroeder says, “This year’s quilter show off the artistry of quilters in traditional as well as innovative techniques. There is something for everyone to enjoy in the Lancaster quilt contest.

Quilts were entered in the international contest from 36 US states and nine other countries.

An unborn quilt starts out with such promise. All our hopes of successful piecing, sharp points and straight, even quilting stitches are yet to be realized. It’s all such a possibility. Conceptually, you plan the pattern, color, size, or maybe not. Just maybe, you throw caution to the wind and heavens forbid, design as you go! I really don’t think I can actually do that, but I know it’s been done! You have so many decisions to make. To appliqué, and then needle turn or fuse, embellish, rotary-cut or use scissors, machine or hand quilt?

Once the idea is conceived you need to purchase fabric, because we never, ever use our stashes, we’re saving that for… I don’t know what! With such a great excuse to go to the fabric shop, why not bring a quilter friend so she can buy something special to add to her stash. Besides, you’ll need the advice and support of a comrade quilter because it can be brutal among all those bolts. You know how seductive it can be as you stroll by the bolts so neatly wound. Those colors just calling out to you and before you know it you’re intoxicated with cotton and forgot your original plan.

Stacey shopping at Zook's in Pennsylvania.

Once you’ve made it home from an exhausting battle of the bolts, you wash them (with Orvus quilt soap) and then iron them. Or, you hide the newly purchased fabrics before someone close to you has you treated for your addiction to quilter’s cotton.

As the patches turn into blocks you begin to feel a sense of satisfaction. Maybe at this point you’ve changed your plans and have decided to add sashing, or set-in squares, no problem. You forge forward and soon the blocks begin to form the quilt top. You are so close; you can almost hear angels sing. But then…an “uh-oh” moment occurs as you realize to won’t have enough fabric to finish the last few blocks. How could you have miscalculated? What will you do? You measured using your new quilt calculator; you used the charts from your Quilters Math book. But alas, it doesn’t matter. Okay, no problem, we are quilters and a tough breed. We’ve been here before, just solve the problem. So you head back to the shop to buy more of the fabric, which you know, before you even leave your home, that the bolt is gone, and new stock has taken its place. AHHHH!! Okay, breathe, you go on–line to search the internet, start calling all the catalogues and your friends, eventually you come up with it. Such determination!

As part of the original plan you included quilting designs. You draw them on the finished quilt top with water erasable pens and chalk pencils, so you can have the pleasure of drawing them again as they erase during the quilting process. Why is it that the lines erase during quilting and when we’re done we can never seem to get them out?

Shopping at Sauder's among the hundreds of bolts of quilters cotton. Somewhere in Pennsylvania.

The time to baste and layer is upon you. This is a necessary, but back and/or knee breaking, part of the process. Layering is like the third trimester, things are really taking shape now, your quilt is becoming a reality!

Usually we begin by locating pins and masking tape. It’s been so long… You think, when is the last time you basted? You hope the tape is still sticky and floor is clean! As the layers are carefully piled on the floor your cats begin to see the batting as their own personal kitty toy. They run under and over as you try to smooth it out. Having finally wrestled the cats away, taped the backing down, and layered the batting and quilt top, you begin.

You want to enlist your quilt friends to help. If you can’t seem to locate any helpers, rent a film, a long one, and listen as you baste the day away. Some four hours later, you have the satisfaction of holding what is beginning to feel like a quilt. Only you have about six months, or so, of quilting ahead of you.

As the days, turn into weeks and months, progress is being made and your under finger is now chopped meat. You’re breaking quilting needles at a pretty regular pace and hoping not to snap one into your eye. Fortunately, you have the perfect salve that helps to soothe the offended finger over-night.

As the last of the quilting stitches are sewn in, a bittersweet feeling overcomes. So glad to be finished, but we will miss the comfortable familiarity of picking up this quilt every evening.

Happily, you have put aside fabric for the binding. Once again, the cats come alive and enjoy swatting at the binding strip as it dangles over the ironing board, as you press it in half. An uneventful process, the binding is attached to the squared-up quilt and all that is left is the label and maybe a rod-pocket. The label will announce the birthday of the quilt and the proud quilt-maker.